


Like a Dam in a River

by FifteenDozenTimes



Category: Sparks Nevada Marshal on Mars, The Thrilling Adventure Hour
Genre: Developing Relationship, Empath, F/M, Other, Pegging, Telepathic Bond, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 12:15:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5127251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FifteenDozenTimes/pseuds/FifteenDozenTimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Red Plains Rider jumps back in time to stop a war that's threatening both the past and future. It's easier than figuring out what she wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like a Dam in a River

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place partially in the time between "Dinner and a Groovy" and "Once and Future Thing" and partially in the last five minutes of "Once and Future Thing". 
> 
> For a refresher, Mitch & Ray are the astronaut pals who show up in "Mayor's Retreat".
> 
> For [friendship-canoe](http://friendship-canoe.tumblr.com/), who is great.
> 
> [epershand](archiveofourown.org/users/epershand) is also great, but this is not for her, so there.

Red’s made a lot of dumb, impulsive decisions in her life, but jumpin’ into a time warp in a fit might be the dumbest.

“You ain’t Jim,” the taller, stupider-lookin’ of the two men starin’ at her, says.

“I’m his ex-wife,” Red says. She’s got a touch of a headache, but almost as soon as she realizes that she’s overcome by a wave of dizziness as her Nah Nohtek, praise be it, sets it right. 

“Another one?”

Of course she ain’t the only one. Red could travel to a thousand different places in a thousand different times and probably not be the only one of his ex-wives in a ten-mile radius.

“Oh bagropa,” she says, as her Nah Nohtek finishes helpfully gettin’ rid of her headache and nausea, and she’s clear-headed enough to realize just exactly what she’s gotten herself into. Or, really, to realize how little she understands about exactly what she’s gotten herself into.

The shorter one with the thick-rimmed glasses squints at her a little, curious; the taller one just sighs.

“Think I’d better go call Cynthia,” he says.

*

“Congratulations, Red,” Nevada says, finally, and pulls her in for a tight hug.

“I would have congratulated you first,” Croach says, “but I was busy jailing the outlaw who shot you.”

“Who I arrested,” Sparks says, and Red rolls her eyes.

“It ain’t a contest,” she says. “Thank you, Croach.”

She’s shouldn’t surprised that Croach also hugs her; some time ago he got in the habit of tryin’ to mimic human touchin’, and at least he’s got the context right this time.

But when he touches her, it’s like an electric shock radiatin’ out from his hands on her back, his long arms around her, his body pressed up against hers. Red’s nerves and her brain are screamin’ feelings at her - yearnin’, anxiety, pride, satisfaction, _yearnin’_ \- faster than she can process.

She pulls back with a gasp, and it’s gone in an instant. Croach looks a little shell-shocked, too, so whatever just happened didn’t just happen to her. 

“Bagropa,” Croach says, quiet, almost a whisper, and then, even quieter so she almost misses it, “praise Nah Nohtek.”

“What just happened?”

“Nah Nohtek, praise be it, transmitted sensory data from you to me, and vice versa,” Croach says, still lookin’ a little shaky around the edges. “It is why our tribe do not engage in casual touching.”

“So this is all super interesting,” Nevada says, from the doorway, “but what if we move this celebration to the saloon so I can get a few rotguts in me before the Martian anatomy lesson?”

“Will you let us talk without whinin’?”

“I ain’t never whined a day in my life,” he says, and Red chooses to pretend it’s true; she’d like to move this chat somewhere she can sit down, anyway.

*

“I don’t need to rest,” Red says, for the thousandth time. “I’m here to put a stop to a war, so point me to the fightin’ and let me stop it.”

Ray takes his glasses off to rub at his temples. “That’s the thing, Mrs. Lyons - “

“It’s The Red Plains Rider,” Red says, also for the thousandth time. “Call me that, or call me Red, but you call me Mrs. Lyons again and there’ll be a war needs stoppin’ right here.”

Mitch laughs an overly loud, rough laugh. He’s got a stupid face and a nose that tells tales of more than a few brawls; Red’s taken to him a fair amount quicker than she’s takin’ to Ray.

“Sorry. Red. The thing, _Red_ , is there isn’t a war yet. There are small pockets of increasingly violent rebellion, and there are negotiations that will almost certainly fail, and there’ll most likely be a full-scale war very soon, but we were sort of counting on Jim to talk our way out of this before it comes to that.”

“Great,” Red says, and sinks down into the nearest chair. She could take out ornery robots ‘til the hypercattle come home, but she ain’t never been one for talkin’. “Maybe I should rest up.”

“You can stay at my place,” Mitch says. “Guest room’s all set up.”

Ray makes that frowny little anxious face he keeps makin’. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He don’t seem to think anything’s a good idea. “If you’ve got a place to sleep and runnin’ water, I’ll take it.”

“But - “

“It’ll be fine, Ray,” Mitch says, and herds Red out of the lab.

*

Red starts gettin’ used to the feedback from her Nah Nohtek, to the weird buzz under her skin when it’s workin’ to maintain her body temperature, to the little bits of info she gets from folks like Nevada, or Mordecai, or Felton (it’s a bit like bein’ drunk, brain goin’ fuzzy at the edges as her Nah Nohtek tries to process what little data she can get), to sleepin’ less, to gettin’ hungry less, to just about everything.

She can’t get used to touchin’ Croach, though. His theory, which he apparently got by body-switchin’ with Nevada at some point, is that feelings are the human body makin’ up for not havin’ a full set of twenty-eight senses, and she’s gettin’ overwhelmed by the translation from G’loot data to human feelings. Whatever it is feels like drownin’, so the reason don’t much matter. 

It doesn’t matter all that much, really, since Red doesn’t often find herself needin’ to touch Croach. Not ‘til dinner at Mordecai’s, at least.

She starts out careful; the pleasure bein’ ain’t payin’ all that much attention to the two of them, anyway, so she can just slide her hand around the back of Croach’s neck and tug him in close.

Warmth floods through her body, spreadin’ out from her hand, which is unusual ‘cause Croach tends to run cooler than most. but it only takes a second for her to figure out it ain’t that kind of warmth. Red _wants_ , so deep and so thoroughly that it buckles her knees. Croach catches her, ‘cause he could tell it was about to happen. His arm around her waist feels so good she can’t help but laugh.

“Are you alright?” Croach asks, brow wrinkled in concern. He starts slidin’ his arm away, pullin’ against her hand on his neck. “I can step away, if - “

“Don’t you dare,” she says, and yanks him down into a kiss, chasin’ more of whatever high she’s gettin’ from him.

Kissin’ him changes it, though, somethin’ shifts and all of a sudden she feels like she just might break down cryin’. She pulls back, and the look on Croach’s face confirms this ain’t comin’ from herself.

“Are you okay?”

“I am sorry, The Red Plains Rider. I am - I am sorry.”

Croach’s face is awful familiar to her, the same face he was makin’ the last time she saw him in the cave behind the waterfall; she fell asleep to that anxious, unhappy face and woke up to nothin’.

“Croach, what’s goin’ on?”

Croach opens his mouth, closes it again, and another wave of that warm wanting feelin’ flows through her, followed by a hot surge of shame. Oh. Oh _bagropa_.

“They are watching,” he says, “we must pretend.” He laughs, an odd, forced little giggle, and Red joins him, and they’re going to have to talk about this sometime but this ain’t the time nor the place.

*

Mitch says somethin’ startin’ with “I should warn you,” but Red’s disoriented from the short-range teleport and her Nah Nohtek’s buzzin’ in her head loud enough to drown him out. She nods, which probably wasn’t the right response, since he frowns like she’s done somethin’ odd, but before he can repeat himself the front door swings open and a kid comes barrelin’ out.

“You were warnin’ me you’ve got a kid? I don’t mind, long as he knows to respect a closed door.”

“I was warnin’ you that this is Jim’s kid,” Mitch says, a bit strained as he’s currently bein’ climbed on by the kid in question.

Oh bagropa.

“I’m Owen,” says the tiny, square-jawed fella on Mitch’s back, and sticks his hand out in a fair approximation of Jim’s confident handshake.

Red shakes his hand, runnin’ on autopilot. Her brain’ll catch up to reality soon, probably, and she might not want to be standin’ on the lawn when it happens.

“I’m Red,” she says. “Mitch, can I - I think I need to lie down.”

“Of course. Owen, can you show her the guest room? I need to talk to your ma.”

Red’s legs carry her down the hall, Red’s mouth manages to thank Owen for showin’ her the room, Red’s arms shut the door behind her, and Red’s body lands on the bed before her brain’s quite caught up.

She’s five-hundred years in the past, aimin’ to shoot at a problem that apparently wants talkin’ to solve, all by her lonesome, because she was mad at Jim. Good decision makin’ skills, Red.

Red closes her eyes and lets her mind drift, back to Croach and the way he looked when she leapt into the time warp. He hadn’t quite figured out what she was plannin’, she moved so suddenly, and still mostly just looked like he was bracin’ himself for the choice he thought was inevitable.

If she could take his hand right now, she could just borrow his feelings ‘til she figures out her own. Smug, she thinks, he’d be smug about how Jim fired her up ‘til she made a big dumb mistake, a mistake she’ll associate with Jim ‘til the day she dies, makin’ Croach look better by comparison. Relieved, maybe, that Jim’s got a whole family here that Red won’t want to intrude on. And warmth, always that warmth under everything, that warmth she’s pretty sure only shows up when he’s touchin’ her. 

Red can’t access Croach’s feelings, though, on account of she’s five hundred dang years away from him. Red’s plenty used to findin’ a man-shaped hole in her life all of a sudden, but this one’s sharp enough around the edges she ain’t sure it’s fixin’ to close up anytime soon.

*

Red can’t breathe. There’s an odd fluttering in her chest, her Nah Nohtek doin’ whatever it does to make sure she’s gettin’ enough oxygen, but Croach has two fingers deep inside her and his thumb on her clit and the fluttering barely registers. They’re caught in a feedback loop, her pleasure makin’ him feel good, his pleasure transmittin’ back to her through his fingers, makin’ her feel better, makin’ him feel better, and Red’s about to find out if Nah Nohtek will bring her back from death by orgasm.

Every time she tries to tell him to move a little, or fuck her harder, or put a little more pressure on her clit, he does it almost before she finishes the thought. Her body’s just tellin’ him what she needs, and he’s givin’ it to her, and she’s so close she aches.

Croach is breathin’ hard, which is odd, on account of G’loots don’t generally breathe; Red might ask him about it if her brains don’t melt out her ears first. He crooks his fingers, just exactly right, presses down with his thumb just exactly right, and her Nah Nohtek wallops her with a whole bunch of turned-on fascination and there she goes, comin’ so hard her vision whites out, clenchin’ so hard on Croach’s fingers she might be breakin’ em.

“Bagropa,” Croach says, quiet and awed, cheeks flushed and eyes wider than usual, focused entirely on the place where his fingers are spreadin’ her open.

He waits until she stops spasming, until she’s just barely got her breath back, and starts workin’ his thumb against her again. Red yelps, and slaps at his arm.

“Nope! Nope, don’t,” she pants, and Croach tilts his head.

“Your body - “

“My body ain’t always right, Croach,” she says, and sighs with relief (and a little disappointment, if she’s honest, but it really is startin’ to hurt) when he pulls his hand away and leaves her empty.

Red shivers a little from it, from bein’ alone in her body with only her own feelings, her own aches and satisfactions, and the sudden absolute certainty that she ain’t just bein’ overwhelmed by Croach’s feelings for her, that the swoopy feelin’ in her gut just from lookin’ at him is all hers.

They were supposed to talk. She asked him to come back to her camp so they could talk about what happened at dinner, about what might happen next. Red’s never come so hard so many times in a row in her entire dang life, and she ain’t said more than four words in a row for hours.

Croach is on his knees, starin’ at her, chest risin’ and fallin’ with the breathin’ he ain’t supposed to be doin’, shiny with sweat or whatever he excretes instead, slit between his legs open and glistening and just beggin’ to be fully explored. She can hardly start a conversation with him in this condition, it’d be cruel.

Red struggles up to her knees, gets on his level and yanks him forward into a sloppy, needy kiss. The rush of emotions she gets from him is just beautiful, desperation and arousal and need and love and just enough anxiety to sweeten all the good stuff. Red slides her hand down his chest, pauses over the spot where he’s soft and warm and shivers at the force of his need spikin’.

“Tell me what you want,” she whispers against his lips.

“Focus,” he says. “I am already telling you.”

*

Red didn’t think she had any expectations about Jim’s ex-wife, but Cynthia ain’t at all what she expected. She’s tall and broad-shouldered, with a plain, pleasant face and soft gray eyes. 

“Mitch doesn’t always think things through,” she says, over pancakes and bacon. Red doesn’t think she could bring herself to cook up a fine breakfast for her ex-husband’s new ex-wife from the future, or hold a civil conversation with her. Maybe that’s Cynthia’s thing, her fame and likeability, her ability to hold her own on the frontier. Cynthia’s exactly what she should’ve expected, someone who’s got some special way about her to catch Jim’s eye. “If you’d be happier somewhere else, I can ask him to take care of it.”

Red’d be happier back on G’loot Praktaw, at her campsite under the stars, but according to Ray that can’t happen for a good month or so while they recalibrate the time travel device, so she can’t think of what to say. 

“I’m happy to have you here,” Cynthia says, breaks Red’s indecisive silence. “I’m not trying to get rid of you.”

“I didn’t think so,” Red says. “Thanks, for the room. And the food. And...everythin’.”

“If anyone understands doing something silly for Jim, it’s me. Might as well make it easier for you.”

_Doing something silly for Jim_ doesn’t sound quite right, but she can’t latch on to the place it goes wrong. She’s doin’ this for herself, at least that’s what she keeps tellin’ herself, but it was Jim who got her so worked up she flung herself back in time. Maybe that matters, maybe it don’t.

“Is ‘Red Plains Rider’ a title, or a name?”

“Both, I reckon,” she says. She can hear Croach sayin’ it, like he’s tellin’ her who she is every time. 

“And you said he goes by what, now?”

“Cactoid Jim.”

“Cactoid Jim and The Red Plains Rider,” she says, and smiles. “Sounds like a comic book.”

“I don’t actually know what that is,” Red admits, and Cynthia laughs, deep and musical and not at all unkind. 

“I’m sure Owen’ll tell you.”

*

The sun’s peekin’ over the horizon when the feedback she gets from Croach’s Nah Nohtek tilts from _more needy than tired_ to _full-on exhaustion_. Even so, she still gets a flush of disappointment from him when she slips her dripping fingers out of him.

Red wipes her fingers off on her blanket and settles in against Croach’s side. The more she touches him, the easier it gets to filter the rush of feedback from her Nah Nohtek, figure out where he ends and she begins.

“So that’s why the first time wasn’t any good?” Red asks, interruptin’ Croach’s slow descent into sleep. “No Nah Nohtek?”

“There were more reasons,” Croach says, workin’ his fingers through her sweat-soaked hair. “But Nah Nohtek would have helped. I have had to learn how to explain myself to beings without Nah Nohtek, and I was not very good at it before.”

They’d been so awkward, then; if Red had known at the time Croach hadn’t ever cavorted with anyone in that particular way, that he didn’t have the experience with bad first times she did, things might’ve been different. If she’d wanted it more, wanted it better, if they hadn’t made her feel like she needed to choose once and for all right then, if...if. 

It don’t matter right here, right now, and under Croach’s sleepy contentment she can feel a heaviness she’s been carryin’ around for years meltin’ away.

*

“I invented sentient robots,” Ray says, for the hundredth time. When it comes time for Red to demonstrate how to take down a robot outlaw with a single shot, she’ll use him as target practice.

“You ever fought one?”

“We’re just negotiating!”

“Rootin’ out this sort of thing takes equal parts smilin’ and shootin’,” Red says; it ain’t until it’s out of her she realizes she’s quotin’ Jim. “The thing about robots - “

“I know the thing about robots, I invented them.”

“Let her talk, Ray.” Mitch is sittin’ in the corner, mostly laughin’ at their arguin’ instead of actually contributin’ anything.

“The thing about robots is they tend to get real single-minded,” Red says. “You can’t negotiate with someone only wants one thing unless you aim to offer that one thing.”

“Well,” Mitch says, smirkin’ like an ass, “we can offer to just let ‘em kill all humans.”

“That’s not what they’re after!” Ray says.

“Do we know what they’re after?”

“This is all beside the point,” he says, instead of answerin’ her.

“You opened up a time warp to suck Jim back in time to fight in this uprisin’, but fixin’ it is beside the point?”

“What we should be talkin’ about,” Mitch says, serious all of a sudden, “is how to convince the people who’re actually in charge that when we got you instead of Jim we didn’t make a colossal fuckup and squander all our resources.”

“Oh,” Red says. “Well, good luck with that.”

*

_This is stupid_ Red thinks, hard as she can, tries to shut out everything but that phrase. _This is real stupid._

“It is not,” Croach says, opens his eyes and frowns at her. “It is good practice.”

“If you didn’t think it was stupid you would’ve thought that at me,” Red says.

“The ability to transmit whole thoughts via Nah Nohtek is somewhat rare, Red Plains Rider. I would like to know if we can do it.”

Croach is makin’ that face, where his eyebrows tilt down and his mouth goes lopsided and Red knows it usually comes before he gives her or Nevada a big speech about the feelings he claims he doesn’t have, so she rolls her eyes but then closes them and smiles at him. 

“Fine,” she says. He rests his hand on her knee, and Red sighs at the initial rush of feeling before she adjusts to it. No matter how good she gets at this, how used to it, that first flush better never go away.

There’s a small surge of anxiety from him, and then a thought sort of slips into her brain.

_H'ra'hgn_.

Red opens her eyes to Croach smilin’ more serenely than the feedback she’s gettin’ from him suggests. 

“I don’t think I quite got it,” she says. “That ain’t a word.”

“Repeat it?”

“H’ra’hgn?”

All of a sudden Red’s so delighted she can’t help but throw her head back and laugh. The urge passes as quick as it came on, givin’ her a chance to figure out it came from Croach.

“It does not sound right with your single human tongue,” Croach says. “I should not have laughed.”

“It’s alright. What’s it mean?”

“It would be both agreeable and convenient to me should you choose to spend our lives together,” Croach says, with an accompanying sprinkle of anxiety tingling up her leg. His cheeks have gone just the tiniest bit purple. “It is not used much, as it is overly sentimental.”

“I won’t tell anyone you’re a big ol’ softie,” she says.

“I am no softer or firmer than any other - “ Croach starts, but she cuts him off with a kiss.

*

Red ain’t never had much family to speak of; the closest she ever got to havin’ the sorts of cozy family dinners Cynthia and Mitch have was that brief stretch of marital bliss with Jim, before he got too distracted by mayorin’, before she saved his dreams and ruined her life, when they’d ride by day and come home to the same four-walls-and-a-roof by night.

Red could’ve had this, maybe, once, the house and the people and even the kind-eyed square-jawed swaggerin’ little boy. It don’t hurt near as much as it could have; she must be as over Jim as she claimed to be.

Croach’ll be relieved, if’n she ever gets back to tell him.

“My dad was almost President?”

“Sure was.”

“I’ve never known Jim to be ‘almost’ anything,” Cynthia says. Red pretends not to notice the pointed look Mitch shoots her.

“He decided to go another way, at the last minute,” Red says. It’s not as good a story this way, but she ain’t likely to tell his wife and kid all the details. All the details she can remember, at least, from before he wiped her out of existence. “He’s the one had to talk ‘em all into votin’ for someone else.”

“Huh,” Mitch says. “So we know of at least one time someone managed to convince folks Jim wasn’t the best guy for the job.”

“There were extenuatin’ circumstances.”

“Sure, but we got those in this instance, too.”

“Jim was always humming these little songs about himself,” Cynthia says. “Catchy ones. Maybe you just need a theme song.”

Red laughs hard enough she almost misses Owen humming a familiar tune, and the suddenly thoughtful set of Mitch’s face.

*

Red ain’t quite ready to leave this bubble she and Croach are in and get back to reality, but all her blankets are pretty gross, so she sneaks off while Croach is sleepin’ so she can break into Nevada’s place and do some laundry. She’d left the contents of her saddlebags spilled all over the floor of the cave so she could carry the soiled bedding into town; when she gets back, Croach is lookin’ with a fair amount of fascination at a particular item.

“What is this?” 

“I could show you,” Red says, with a suggestive wiggle of her eyebrow. It ain’t quite as seductive as it could be, though, since Croach don’t even have enough context to know she’s flirtin’ with him.

“You cannot just tell me?”

Red laughs and starts layin’ out blankets. “Remember how confused you were the first time you saw me naked, on account of my business not bein’ the same as G’loot women’s business?”

“Business?”

“Genitals, Croach.”

“Well then just say genitals.”

Red keeps her back to him while she rolls her eyes. She’s about eighty percent sure he’s got the hang of metaphors by now and he just likes to nitpick, but if she gets him in a bad mood this’ll be a much less entertainin’ afternoon than it could be.

“It really is easier to show you,” she says, conjures up a real nice image of Croach on his back, stuffed good and full of her cock, and rests her hand on his shoulder. She ain’t sure they’re good enough at this yet for that to work, but Croach’s cheeks go purple and his eyes go a little wide.

“Bagropa,” he says, lookin’ at the pink toy in his hand with more wonder than confusion. “Does it work the other way as well?”

Red gets an image from him, then, herself on all fours with Croach inside her, hands tight on her hips, leanin’ back so he can watch her open up around him. She’s awful glad she washed the blankets so they can filthy ‘em up again.

“I don’t know if the harness’ll fit you,” she says, muffled in her shirt as she hurries to get undressed. “But we’ll make it work.”

Croach fucks her sweet and clumsy, adjustin’ to the way the strap-on feels, the fact it puts a little buffer between him and the parts of her he likes to get feedback from when he’s usin’ his hands, the extra microsecond it takes for his hands to absorb the feelin’ of what she wants him to do. 

It’s good anyway, on account of it’s Croach, and it’s her, and when he finds the right rhythm and she can’t concentrate on tryin’ to direct him anymore he hunches over to rest his chest along her back, his mouth next to her ear, and she can feel him everywhere as he fucks her right over the edge and doesn’t stop.

*

When Red gets back, there’s two things she needs to ask Nevada: one, when did the idiots of his home planet figure out teleportin’ everywhere was a terrible idea, and two, does him bein’ such an idiot have to do with damage done to Earth folks from decades of shitty transportation?

Red cracks her neck and sighs, tries to work herself up for what’s to come. They’re far enough away from the fightin’ they can’t hear it, but the air stinks of smoke and the aftermath of lasers hittin’ flesh. Red’s used to scuffles, to one-on-ones or, at most, three-or-four-on-ones, and maybe she shouldn’t’ve convinced them all she could make herself a folk legend in a war zone.

The negotiator, a kindly-lookin’ older woman who’s apparently cold as stone when she needs to be, ain’t the travelin’ companion Red’d prefer. If Jim were here, he could do - has done - exactly what she’s aimin’ to do, but he ain’t the travelin’ companion she’s longin’ for, either.

Croach’d look at her like she was crazy if she told him she thought she couldn’t do this. She could rest her hand on his arm and feel how confident he’d be, how certain he always is that she could do anythin’ in the world. She wouldn’t need to be certain, if Croach were here to be certain for her.

Mitch, Ray, and the camera crew finally beam in a few feet behind them. Red curls her hand into a fist, relaxes it, and puts the look on her face that let her near singlehandedly keep the plains of her home safe for years, by reputation as much as skill.

Jim ain’t the only one who’s done this before.

*

After a long, but not long enough, week of bein’ wrapped up in each other, hidden from the world by a waterfall and their own desire to avoid reality, Red wakes up alone and her heart sinks. She springs out from under the blanket she’d been sharin’ with Croach last night, and is in the middle of tearin’ through all their bags lookin’ for where he hid the note that’ll break her heart again, when her Nah Nohtek picks up on a presence behind her.

“Are you alright?” Croach asks. Red’s gonna strangle him.

“Where the Hell did you go?” She snarls, spins on her heels to give him one of those glares she uses to bring folks to their knees. 

“I was oiling my hoversaddle,” he says, impervious to the fury she’s about to unleash on him. “I thought I might go to the station today, but I was waiting for you to wake up.”

Red closes her eyes and focuses on calmin’ herself down. “Why?”

“I thought you might be upset if you thought I had left you again,” he says, and Red opens her eyes to Croach lookin’ utterly baffled. 

“I meant why’re you goin’ to the station?”

“You are a solitary being,” Croach says. “I thought you might like some space.”

Red reaches out, then, and he takes the hint and steps close enough for her to take his hand. She focuses, brings up everythin’ she was feelin’ just a couple minutes ago, the ache of wakin’ up alone, the panic of knowin’ he’d left her again, the wild rage she’d been about to fly into. It’s too much for Croach; he yanks his hand away and drops to his knees in front of her.

“I am sorry,” he says, without her havin’ to explain any further. She should, maybe, make him understand she gets how sweet he was bein’, but he takes her face in his hands and kisses her gentle and sweet, and she can tell him later with words what she’s tellin’ him now with her body.

*

It takes a solid month of beamin’ around the planet, gettin’ just a little less sick every time as she adjusts to it, before the negotiator gets to start her part of this without Red addin’ to her robot hand collection. The first one had been the worst; they’d known it would be, but Red’s a second-chance sort of person and havin’ Ray step in to shut half the rebels down permanently was more upsettin’ than it should be.

But Mitch had been right. Even on a planet this overcrowded, it don’t take much time to spread the word, and the word they spread was pretty simple: stop fightin’, or the Red Plains Rider takes your hands, or whatever you use to shoot with. Keep fightin’ after that, you die. Surrender peaceably, you get to keep in touch with the finest negotiator on planet as she works out the details of a new tomorrow, or whatever.

“I’m...from the future,” Red says, into the camera, in the clip that gets shown the most. “Y’all are independent then, and it ain’t happened like this.”

She outdraws a particularly ornery-lookin’ robot without avertin’ her gaze, takes his hand off with one shot of a laser pistol, and the screen goes black. Red ain’t no Cactoid Jim, but she’s a damn excellent Red Plains Rider.

Mitch goes home a couple weeks in, once she convinces him she don’t need his backup, but Red can’t leave ‘til she sees this through. She’s startin’ to learn to like Ray; watchin’ him tear up a bit at the idea of turnin’ off a robot for good softened her up some. Ruth, the negotiator, don’t talk much, and that’s fine by Red. The camera folks seem scared of her, which is less fine, but ain’t anythin’ Red ain’t used to.

She ain’t asked anyone how she’ll get back to her time when this is all over. The Red Plains Rider ain’t been terrified of much in her life, but she ain’t ready to be told she’ll never see home again.

*

It took a few tries to get this right; Red’s strap-on wasn’t exactly designed with Croach in mind. But now they’ve got it right she thinks she might die in Croach’s lap, on account of he ain’t likely to let her stop long enough to eat or sleep.

There are worse ways to go.

Croach is sweet and open for her, so needy he clenches around her every time she pushes in, tries to keep her in place. She’s used her fingers enough for this she knows how good he feels, egg sacs squishin’ around her fingers, so wet she drips when she pulls out.

Red tries to lean back to admire her handiwork, get a good look at her cock openin’ him up, the purple tint of his skin and the shinin’ wetness around his slit, but he’s clutchin’ at her so tight it’s a wonder she can move her hips enough to keep fuckin’ him. 

When he comes, again, shuddering against her and tightenin’ his grip on her even more, she gets hit with a wave of sensation so hard it almost tips her over the edge. They should try that, sometime, see if she can get off just by touchin’ him when he does. For now it’s just good, throbbin’ through her, warm and sharp and just plain good.

“Want me to stop?” she asks, but Croach’s hips are still twitchin’ and he ain’t lettin’ go. Well alright then. Red gentles her hips some, partly ‘cause her thighs are gettin’ sore but partly because her Nah Nohtek’s tellin’ her he’s gettin’ sore himself.

Croach has his head tipped back against the cave wall, pantin’ too hard to respond when she tries to kiss him.

“Why do you do that?” she asks, not necessarily expecting an answer, far gone as he is. “You don’t need to breathe.”

“When a sensation is very intense,” Croach says, voice crackin’ a bit around the words, “I find the additional sensation of Nah Nohtek responding can be overwhelming. The rhythmic intake of air allows me to focus on calming myself.”

“I like when you ain’t calm,” Red says, punctuates it with a good hard thrust of her hips that makes him cry out. Croach makes the prettiest noises when he’s too tired to care. “I like what I can do to you.”

“I like what you do to me as well, Red Plains Rider,” Croach says, with one of the sweetest smiles she’s ever seen. She ain’t fixin’ to ever leave this cave, this spot, he don’t even need to cling on to her to keep her inside him for the rest of their dang lives.

*

By the time she gets the go-ahead to go back to Mitch and Cynthia’s, it’s nearly all over. There’s a whole bunch of weird political stuff, and Ruth’ll be workin’ on this for probably a decade or so, and Red’s here with the understandin’ they might need her back out there again, but it’s good to have a break.

Red teaches Owen how to shoot with her laser pistols, while Cynthia heckles ‘em from the porch. She ain’t ever thought much about kids - they’d been somewhere on the horizon when she married Jim, probably, but they derailed before it became imminent - but she’s gettin’ pretty fond of this one. 

“Careful,” she says, watchin’ him reload with small, steady hands. “Laser bullets’ll give you a nasty burn.” 

Owen nods, then frowns. “Where do you get these?”

“General store,” Red says, before she realizes what he’s really askin’. “I ain’t sure when they were invented.”

“What happens if you run out?”

“I guess she’ll have to learn to use real guns,” Cynthia says; she and Owen have the same laugh.

Her kids might not laugh at all. If she has ‘em. If she has ‘em with Croach, specifically. She’ll have to laugh for ‘em the way she was just learnin’ to laugh for Croach by layin’ a hand on him when she thinks he might find somethin’ funny and lettin’ his joy surge through her. 

She’d been back together with Croach for two weeks, and now she might never see him again. This ain’t the time or place for this sort of thinkin’.

“How was that?” Owen asks, snappin’ her out of the weird trail she’s wanderin’ down. She glances out at the horizon, where there ain’t a single can left.

“If you ever find yourself in the future, big guy, you’ll be all set,” she says, takes her pistol from him so she can holster it. “You might be a better shot than your dad.”

Owen beams so bright it blinds her for a second. Sometimes it’s nice not to need Nah Nohtek, praise be it, to know what’s goin’ on in someone’s head. 

*

Red’s bathin’ in the lake, a little ways past the rush of the waterfall touchin’ down, when she hears her communicator beepin’ from the shore. It ain’t a distress call, so she ignores it.

The water’s cold enough it hurts more than helps, but she stretches out anyway, works the satisfyin’ soreness out of her legs, her hips, her arms. She’s sticky just about everywhere, and it ain’t exactly a pleasant feelin’ but there’s a bittersweet edge to washin’ it all off. She’s startin’ to get that itch she gets, the need to run far and fast and remind herself how free it is, but she ain’t quite ready to acknowledge it yet. There’s a part of her, a steely hard part forged in the fires of one too many bad experiences, that expects as soon as they go back to life as normal somethin’ll shatter this all apart.

She can’t stop that from happenin’, she’s learned that if she ain’t learned nothin’ else, but she can stay here until she can’t take it anymore, get as much of this as she can as long as she can.

The sun’s hot in the sky, all the water on her skin pricklin’ as it dries near instantly in the heat. Red stretches out on the blanket she brought down, enjoyin’ the warmth on her body, lettin’ her hair dry in the sun, and remembers the communicator.

_You two fixin’ to come back any time soon?_

_You two still alive? Either one of you?_

_Did you kill Croach? Croach is dead from cavortin’, ain’t he?_

_Or did he kill you?_

_One of you answer me, or I’ll assume you’re both dead, and I won’t cry at the funeral._

Nevada must be lonely. Red’s happy enough here, now, to feel a little sorry for him. It probably won’t last, so she taps out a quick return message and then shuts the communicator down so he’ll leave ‘em alone.

_We’ll be back soon, you big baby._

*

“You really should be comin’ to the meetings,” Mitch says, while Owen clears the dinner plates and Cynthia’s in the kitchen gettin’ dessert.

“I ain’t much for meetings,” she says, “and my part’s done.”

“You’re the face of this whole thing.”

“So you ain’t gonna tell me how it’s going?”

“They’ve elected leadership, we’re probably one or two meetings away from signing a treaty, and, I dunno, a bunch of other boring political stuff’s bein’ worked out.”

“So it’s over.”

“Basically,” Mitch says.

“And what about - “ Red starts, but she still can’t quite bring herself to ask. As long as she don’t ask, the answer won’t be no.

“Ray thinks we’ve just about got it,” Mitch says, apparently done lettin’ her pretend. “Time travelin’ leaves soft spots in time, sort of, so we should be able to get you back to about the time you left no problem.”

Maybe they could send her a little bit farther ahead than that, to whenever she’s made the right decision and ain’t gettin’ her heart jerked around anymore.

Cynthia and Owen bring out brownies and ice cream, interruptin’ Red’s train of thought before she gets too hopeful, or too mad at herself for hoping.

“It might take a while,” Mitch says, “we burned out the machinery but good. We’d sort of assumed Jim’d hop right through as soon as we opened the portal, and holdin’ it open as long as we did wasn’t easy. But we will get you home, Red.”

“You can just keep living here,” Owen says, around a mouthful of mint chocolate chip.

“I don’t think you get to offer that, kid,” Mitch says, rufflin’ his hair. “But he’s right. I can just keep addin’ to my collection of ex-Mrs.-Jims.”

Mitch laughs his big, boomin’ laugh. He’s the only one.

*

Before the cave stops feelin’ like a hideaway and starts feelin’ like a trap, Red starts packin’ up to head back to town. Croach don’t ask about it, just rests his cool hand on the back of her neck for a minute to get a sense of her feelings, then presses a sweet kiss to the top of her head and starts packin’ up his own stuff.

She rides on the back of his hoversaddle on the way back to town rather than trackin’ the wild horse she rode to the cave on; it gives her a chance to wrap her arms around him, a little too tight, and reassure herself with the soft hum of his happiness. She doesn’t think about what happened when Jim left their home to be mayor, when she left Sparks behind to figure herself out, when Croach left their cave the first time around.

They head straight for the station; when the doors open for ‘em, Nevada finishes babblin’ just in time to roll his eyes clear out of his head. He’s smilin’, though, and Red chooses to believe underneath all his whinin’ he’s happy for her. For them.

“Oh yeah, look at you two. You two look as happy as a couple of space peas in a pod who kicked the third space pea that comes in the pod out of that pod.”

*

Red goes to the treaty signin’, knowin’ she’ll overshadow Ruth’s efforts, knowin’ she ain’t really the one who should be shakin’ hands and smilin’ for cameras. It’s Friday night; Sunday there’ll be a parade in her honor. Red thinks of arguin’ about it, but Mitch probably knew she would, and sends Owen to flash that familiar, proud smile of his at her and ask if he can ride on her float. 

The mornin’ of the parade, Ray calls.

“We’ve figured it out,” he says, in that monotone she’s learnin’ means he worked through the night and forgot how to have feelings. He sounds like a denizen of G’loot Praktaw when he gets like this, and Red aches so hard for home what he said doesn’t register right away. “But it has to be - “

“Wait, what?” Red cuts him off when it hits her. “You’ve figured - I can go home?”

“You can go home,” he says. “Tonight.”

Red whoops and punches the air, then frowns. “Tonight?”

“Around six,” Ray says. “Eight after six, exactly. I can give you the whole explanation, or you can trust me that in time travel, timing matters.”

“I trust you,” she says, surprises herself a bit with how much she means that. “It’s just awful sudden.”

“You’ll have plenty of time after the parade to say your goodbyes,” he says. “See you tonight.”

Owen comes charging into the room then, all dressed up, the spittin’ image of his daddy except for the long red coat he’s wearin’.

“Look what Mom got me! We match!”

Red wants to see Mars again so bad she can taste it on the back of her tongue, bittersweet longin’ for her home and her friends and her fella. Ain’t no good reason not to be celebratin’ goin’ back, and goin’ back soon.

“Lookin’ good, big guy,” she says, and crouches down to let him climb up on her shoulders.

The parade ain’t the worst thing to ever happen to Red. She’s so used to fightin’ tooth and nail just to be counted, bein’ outright celebrated makes her wary. She ain’t Nevada, she never needed anyone tellin’ her how good she is. But it ain’t the worst thing ever.

“You can come back anytime you want,” Owen says to her, when she finally tells him she’s headed home. 

“Don’t reckon it’ll work out like that,” Red says, “or else your dad’d be back here all the time.”

“I guess,” Owen says, but he don’t look like he believes her. He ain’t said a bad word about Jim the whole time she’s been here; for the first time she wonders if that might not be because he ain’t wanted to.

“Keep pesterin’ Mitch about it,” she says, wishes he had a little Nah Nohtek of his own so she could send him a little comfort. Maybe her arm around his shoulder’ll be enough. Six and a half months gettin’ used to the buzz under her skin and she’s already forgotten what it’s like to be without. “He’ll figure it out for you.”

“Don’t go makin’ promises I can’t keep,” Mitch says, stickin’ his head through the doorway of Red’s room. The guest room, it ain’t hers anymore. “Your ma wants to take Red out for goodbye milkshakes,” he says, and Owen springs off the bed and bolts for the door like if he don’t get there fast enough he won’t be invited.

Mitch smiles after him until he vanishes through the front door, then shakes his head and sighs. “I love him more than Jim ever did,” he says. “Both of ‘em.”

It’s a bitter thought, but there ain’t no bitterness in his voice; he’s just tellin’ her, like Ray tellin’ her what time she can go home. It’s just a fact, just how it is.

Red thinks about the way Cynthia turns her eyes to the floor when Jim’s name comes up, about the look on Owen’s face when she lied about Jim visitin’ ‘em if he could, about Mitch and the way he ain’t complained ‘til now about livin’ in the shadow of a man he keeps tryin’ to bring back.

For the first time, Red knows, all the way in her bones, what choice she should make, what choice she should’ve been makin’ all along.

Red steps through the portal, when it finally opens up for her like the gates of Heaven, with a steely resolve that vanishes the instant she sets foot on the red soil. Her blood roars with her Nah Nohtek tryin’ to right herself after a trip through time, and her stomach heaves.

“Time travel ain’t for folks who just had milkshakes,” she announces, to the four startled, familiar faces starin’ back at her.


End file.
